


friends should sleep in other beds

by karishma



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, M/M, Pining, this entire fic is just pining that's it, this is really gross and just 3k of autumn fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 06:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2458589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karishma/pseuds/karishma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>When Niall goes to bed that night, his entire person smells like Louis’ body soap and aftershave and he ducks his nose into his shirt and, not for the first time, falls asleep feeling lonely and awful and loved.</em><br/> </p><p>niall loves louis so much it's incredible. the only complication is that louis won't let him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	friends should sleep in other beds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badjujuboo (miztrezboo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miztrezboo/gifts).



> the prompt for this fic was: [PINING oh the PINING!uni!au](http://pocketfulofficideas.tumblr.com/post/87690309102/its-monday-and-your-hair-is-messy-you) from this post  
> i tried to run with it as much as i could and i really, really hope you like it (i was so stressed when i saw that i was filling for you because you're one of my favorite writers EVER)  
> the title of this is from ed sheeran's '[friends](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj4Q1KZYWLA)' because it's the only song i listened to when writing this and i highly recommend you listen to it on repeat when reading this if you want the ~full experience~  
> ALSO i reference kodaline a ton in this, but the two songs i quote are [high hopes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4povfmX144) and [all i want](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtf7hC17IBM). these three songs constitute the entirety of the nonexistent playlist for this fic  
> none of this ever happened on our earth

It’s Monday morning and much too early for Niall to open his eyes just yet, but he can hear Louis rifling through his closet looking for something to wear to class. He’s not sure if Louis knows that he’s awake, but it sounds like Louis’ stuffed his face into some article of clothing and is groaning, “Monday, can’t _believe_ it’s fucking Monday already,” into it.

 

He knocks into the doorframe on his way out, evidence that he's slipping on a jumper as he walks, and swears, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck, I swear to God if I wasn’t paying so damn much for these fucking classes I wouldn’t –” and then he’s out of hearing range.

 

Niall’s honestly almost asleep again, stepping back and forth across the fine line of unconsciousness when Louis sneaks back into the bedroom and slides his cool palm across Niall’s forehead and kisses it, “Niall, you lucky bastard.”

  
And then he’s gone and Niall loves him so much it’s incredible.

 

\---

 

Tuesday starts off nearly the same way, only Niall doesn’t pretend to be asleep. He’s sitting up in bed with the white duvet pooling around his waist and an old plum purple v-neck sagging halfway to his belly button. His hair is flopping into his face and Niall crosses his eyes and blows upwards while Louis tries to gather all of his text books.

 

“Still can’t believe you got all afternoon classes, that’s just right unfair,” Louis grumbles.

 

“What have you got first thing, then?” Niall slurs around a yawn, despite knowing the answer is Statistics, Louis’ least favourite course.

 

“Stats at 7:45, though you already know,” Louis fixes him with a bemused look (as he always does with this Tuesday morning routine). “And you’ve got Social Anthro at 1:30 for your _first class_ , which is a mockery of the system to be quite frank.”

 

Niall just shrugs and flops back onto his pillow.

 

Louis takes out a dark green hoodie from the closet and puts it on. “The corn maze just opened at Copas farm, we should go there tonight if you’re free.”

 

“Sounds good, yeah,” Niall says with his eyes closed, envisioning caramel apples and hot cider and Louis’ lips on his.

 

Instead, Louis kisses the bridge of his nose softly and says, “I’ll pick you up after your last class, alright? We’ll head out straight from there.”

 

.

 

Niall’s courses drift by slowly and it’s more than a relief when he walks out of his Music History class and Louis is standing there with a chai latte and two tickets for the haunted corn maze.

 

When they finally get to the farm, it’s dark out and starting to feel chilly. Niall warms his hands around his Costa cup and presses it to his sternum, trying to let the heat seep into his body. Louis’ in front of him at the counter, trading in their tickets for glow-in-the-dark wristbands.

 

The queue to enter the actual corn maze is long, so Niall leaves Louis to hold his place while he gets a caramel apple for them to share. It’s messy, and their chins and hands end up sticky and wet, but it feels good and watching Louis try and stretch his mouth enough to grasp a bite of the apple is enough to make up for it.

 

The thing about being scared is that everybody has their own ways of reacting, and Louis’ is over-the-top dramatic to hide his initial reaction while Niall remains stoic. When they first walk into the maze, nothing jumps out at them but Louis screams loudly anyway.

 

“Scaring away the monsters before they get to scare us, you see,” he says, like it’s obvious.

 

It’s after they round the second corner when a man with a chainsaw jumps out behind Niall and Louis, and starts running after them.

 

Louis flinches violently and shrieks simultaneously, and then finds Niall’s hand in the dark and pulls him as they start sprinting. Niall’s face is carefully neutral, but he can feel his heart pounding all the way down into his fingertips where his pulse is meeting Louis’.

 

They’re nearing the end and they’ve run through practically the whole course, when a woman dressed as God knows what, considering it’s too dark to tell anymore, jumps out of the wall of corn and screams. Louis jumps and presses Niall into the other side of the corn and the woman retreats just as a small child with white eyes and a rusty ax climbs out of the corn next to Niall.

 

It doesn’t look like Louis’ noticed and Niall’s initial reaction is to kiss Louis. It’s mostly the adrenaline coursing through his body and the close proximity of a terrified Louis, but it’s also to do with the fact that Niall’s been in love with him since secondary school. It takes a few seconds for his brain to catch up and conclude that this is a decidedly bad idea, so he takes a deep breath, then two.

 

Instead, he tries to back them up into the middle of the lane so they can continue on the path, but Louis is panting slowly and trying to recover and he glares up at Niall when he tries to walk them.

 

“Let me have a moment, Jesus, that last one startled me a bit, wasn’t really expecting it. I wasn’t, you know–” and he cuts off with a large wail when he notices the kid with white eyes, just staring at the two of them, and presses into Niall like he’s trying to climb out of his body and into Niall’s.

 

They complete the corn maze with Niall’s hand firmly covering Louis’ eyes and carefully not starting every time a figure steps out of the corn stalks.

 

He can feel Louis’ eyes wetting his hand (though he firmly denies crying the moment they collapse into the car), and Niall mumbles empty reassurances into Louis’ ear, carefully avoiding the one phrase that scares Louis more than any amount of dismembered children.

 

\---

 

On Wednesday, Niall falls out of bed. He must have already been sliding off and then he’d dreamt about the kid from the maze and kicked out and the duvet slipped from under him and– long story short, he’s banged his head on the floor and he’s never getting back to sleep.

 

He’s got all of his least favourite classes today – Applied Bio, Integrated Calc, and Survey of American Lit. By some miracle, he’d finished all of his homework the night before (granted, at 2 am), so he’s got nearly five hours to kill before his Bio.

 

He’s pulling himself into the bathroom to shower when Louis comes rushing past him, still dressed in his pyjamas, and pushes into the room and squeezes a glob of toothpaste onto his brush.

 

“Why are you up?” Louis tries to ask around the foam in his mouth.

 

“I think the better question is why aren’t you in class right now,” Niall deflects, because it’s too early in the morning to confess to falling awake.

 

Louis spits in the sink, rinses his mouth, and shoves Niall entirely out of the loo in one move.

 

“See you tonight, babe,” he says, and kisses Niall’s ear before he closes the door in his face.

 

.

 

It’s been a terrible, _terrible_  day, starting with falling out of bed then spilling his tea all over the floor of their car because the lid wasn’t tight enough and then being late to his first class (and his second). The strap on his backpack breaks on his way out of Calculus and then he drops all of his textbooks when he enters his Survey classroom. By the time he’s fitting his key into their flat door, Niall is exhausted and ready to cry and sit in the corner of their kitchen with a cup of tea that won’t spill into his socks.

 

He hasn’t had time to talk to Louis all day, but when Niall enters through the corridor he’s sitting on the couch with their large microfibre blanket, a pot of tea, and a box of (leftover, reheated) pizza.

 

The 7 o’clock news is on, a complete farce as far as Louis is concerned, because Niall knows he couldn’t care less about the GMO labeling debate, but it provides easy white noise as they talk about their days in half sentences around mouthfuls of pizza.

 

It’s late once when they’ve finished their food, and Niall feels like he’s taken a hot bath and is wearing fresh flowers and running through Switzerland, or something. They’re slipping in and out of sleep lazily, and Niall doesn’t want to go down entirely because Louis is right there, his head tucked under Niall’s chin and his caramel hair tucking into Niall’s mouth and this isn’t something he lets himself dream about because it only hurts more when he remembers he’s not allowed to say _I love you_ and _let me stay_ and _we could be something great_.

 

When Niall goes to bed that night, his entire person smells like Louis’ body soap and aftershave and he ducks his nose into his shirt and, not for the first time, falls asleep feeling lonely and awful and loved.

 

\---

 

On Thursdays, Louis’ first class is at 10:30, but he can’t stop himself from waking up before 8 am. He makes two mugs of tea and crawls into Niall’s bed and wakes him up with cold toes on his ankle and a kiss buried in his hair.

 

“What do you want to do this weekend?” Louis asks around the rim of his mug. “Do you think you’ll have loads of homework?”

 

Niall shakes his head. “I’ve got essays and shit due this week so mostly all I’ve got for the weekend is outlining chapters.”

 

Louis raises his eyebrows and tips his head onto Niall’s shoulder. “Harry’s got two tickets to the Kodaline concert on Saturday that he can’t use because he’s decided to go home instead. He says if we cover his tab next time we go out, he’ll give them to us? Are you up for it?”

 

Niall grins largely. “You’re asking if I’m up for an Irish rock concert?”

 

“Right, right. Duh. Fuck I’m so excited, we’re going to hear them play _All I Want_ live.” He’s hiding his smile in Niall’s neck and this feels an awful lot like planning a date except for how Louis won’t let it be.

 

\---

 

Friday, Niall wakes up because Louis remembers what day it is midway through brushing his teeth and shouts _Friday! It’s_ Friday _!_ around his toothbrush and simultaneously spits froth all over their bathroom mirror.

 

He skips into Niall’s room where he’s still tucked up under the comforters and kisses Niall’s left eye. “It’s Friday! My classes are done by 11! Are you going out tonight?”

 

Niall just groans in response.

 

“No, honestly, if you haven’t got anything going on we should stay in and watch _Eat, Pray, Love_ and then feel bad about not being in Italy right now and then spend the rest of the movie yelling at Liz for being an idiot and not staying in Italy forever,” he says, like it’s a routine.

 

“Yeah, okay,” Niall says because he’s too tired to protest. “Sounds good, I’m gonna sleep,” he tries to say, but it’s blurry and pushed into his pillow so he’s not sure if Louis caught all of it.

 

“Right, well, I’ve got my first and only class in forty minutes, so I’ll let you, but see you tonight! Don’t make plans,” and then he kisses Niall’s right eye and leaves the room quietly.

 

.

 

That evening, when Niall finally makes it in after his Anthro course with textbooks and notebooks overflowing in his arms, Louis is sitting on the couch, as promised, with the movie queued on Netflix and junk food piled onto their coffee table. He’s tangled himself in their massive blanket and when he tries to shift so that Niall can share it, he ends up knocking the crisps off of the table.

 

They’ve both changed into sweats and cotton shirts and are twisted together under the blanket. Niall’s eating salt and vinegar Hula Hoops off of his fingers and Louis is moaning about Liz travelling to India and he can’t think of anything he’d enjoy better (he can, but he’s fastidiously ignoring any ideas that involve Louis on him and Louis closer than scientifically possible and Louis and love).

 

Louis, on principle, doesn’t do relationships. He won’t let people see the parts of him that can be used against him most easily and he won’t set himself up for failure and inevitable pain.

 

This is why Niall and Louis have never so much as kissed, not when they’re both dead drunk on the floor of their flat or when they’re so exhausted their heads fall together easier than they can pull apart or when they were 15 and hormonal and experimenting and horny as all hell.

 

Niall tries to remember this when Louis crawls to his end of the couch and tucks himself in between Niall’s body and the back of the couch. He tries to remember when Louis fits the blanket around them snugly and rests his head on Niall’s chest and mumbles nonsense into his torso until he’s asleep. He tries to remember this when he’s carrying Louis into his bedroom and Niall can’t stay, can’t even say _I love you_ without feeling like he’s broken Louis’ trust.

 

\---

 

On Saturday, they don’t do anything at all.

 

They put the Man City v. Tottenham game on at noon and it only takes half an hour to shift from the other side of the couch to being pressed against Louis, legs knotted together.

 

It’s when Niall turns his head to ask Louis if he wants to watch the West Ham game or the Chelsea game next that he realises their faces are really close together. Louis’ breathing onto Niall’s mouth and it doesn’t feel like it would take much at all to add kissing to their lazy day off.

 

They almost do, too, because Louis’ eyes slip close and his face dips and Niall’s about to blink out when Louis pulls away slightly and opens his eyes. He smiles wanly, warily, and instead rests his head on Niall’s chest.

 

Niall lets out a quiet groan and his head fall back onto the armrest. “I just don’t understand, Louis. You know I, like,” he’s so close to saying it, too, the words standing at the tip of his tongue like it’s a diving board into an empty pool.

 

“You can’t. You can’t say it, you can’t say it, you’re going to leave and I won’t– I can’t have you leave,” his breath is catching. “You’re so important and people always leave and it will hurt less if it’s like this instead of like that.”

 

And Niall gets it, is the thing. He understands and people leave and that’s not something that he’s been exempt from experiencing. He’s not ever let himself get attached to anybody this closely because, yeah, _if_ Louis leaves, it’s already gonna hurt like hell, even without the add-ons.

 

The rest of the afternoon blends into the evening in a glaze of repressed tears and Louis’ team losing the footie match and carefully phrased sentences.

 

.

 

When they go to the Kodaline concert that night, the atmosphere is subdued, but Niall’s excitement is bouncing off of Louis and soon enough there’s enough energy coursing through them to power a small city.

 

The ballroom is crowded and all the surfaces are slimy. Niall’s shirt dampens as soon as they step into the building, the air thick with evaporated sweat.

 

Duologue open the show after a short set by Birds of Tokyo, and in the half hour break for Kodaline to get set up, Louis decides he wants to try and get closer to the stage.

 

It’s so sweaty that even the spaces between Louis’ fingers are sticky and he’s twisting their hands together like he’s never going to let go (even though Niall knows he will – sooner, rather than later, too).

 

Louis’ pressed up against his front in the middle of the crowd in their tight space, and Niall’s trying so hard to enjoy the concert and forget about what he can’t have (something that’s infinitely harder with _I’m just scared of never feeling it again… but I’ve only got myself to blame for it_ being melted through the speakers).

 

This entire album is devastatingly sad and the whole crowd is feeling the heartbreak. More than a few people are crying and when Kodaline finally sing _our love was made for movie screens (but if you loved me, why’d you leave me?)_ , Niall has to dip his nose into Louis’ hair and steady his hands on Louis’ shaking shoulders.

 

.

 

When Niall properly sees Louis for the first time all night, it’s in the dim overhead light of their car and Louis’ nose is red and his eyes are swollen, but Niall doesn’t mention it because his own appearance is assuredly in a far worse state.

 

They’ve got a tiny speaker in their living room, and Louis puts _All I Want_ on repeat when they get home. Niall brushes his teeth in time with the repetitive _take my body_ ’s and he falls asleep to _I’ll find somebody like you_.

 

There’s a moment when they’re brushing their teeth over their one shared sink and Louis nudges Niall out of the way with his hip to spit. Niall’s not sure exactly what it is, as he watches Louis bend over and rinse his mouth with water, but he’s suddenly struck with this dizzying dose of want and need and love.

 

Before he can even register it, he’s opened his mouth and is saying, “I could do this with you forever.”

 

It’s not clear as to what exactly he is referring to, but Louis’ lips press together and he nods sombrely. He coughs and then says quietly and barely over the sound of _I lay in tears in bed all night_ , “Yeah, me too.”

  
Louis blinks hard and then walks around Niall and out of the room.

 

This hurts infinitely more than it did yesterday and he’s crying salt into his pillow and mouthing three words over and over until his tongue is sore and dry and he can’t believe it hurts this badly.

 

\---

 

Sunday morning, Niall wakes up when Louis crawls in bed and fits himself on top of Niall. He pushes his head into the corner of Niall’s neck and writes, “I think it’ll be okay, I’m so tired of– you’re not going to leave me and I think it'll be okay.”

 

Niall turns his head to kiss the side of Louis’ and then his ear and then his nose. He kisses across Louis’ cheek and across his eyes and down his jaw and then pauses, breathes onto Louis’ lips and waits until Louis ducks in and presses his lips to Niall’s.

 

It’s slow and desperate and it’s Louis catching the bow of Niall’s lips between his and it’s Niall pressing so hard it’s drawing blood but it still doesn’t feel real, it still doesn’t feel like Louis is letting him have this.

 

When Niall finally has to draw back to catch his breath, Louis shakily tries to start a sentence over and over and over again until, finally, Niall kisses him again, softer this time.

 

“I love you so much it’s incredible.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> all errors are my own (though, kaylee (leprechauncupcakes) did beta for me n i love her!!!!)  
> find me on tumblr at sinabit or moneyedniall and yell about how i literally haven't posted anything since april


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